You’re probably already a member of the Lulu Facebook Group and I’m sure you have checked out our Lulu Fan Page too, but how about using a Facebook Fan Page to promote your own books? After all, if you’re going to find 1000 fans, what better place to start than with your friends and family?

Here’s how to get started. Log in to your Facebook account, and scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see the Advertising link in the bottom toolbar. Click that link (don’t worry, creating pages is free), and on the next page click the Create Facebook Page link. This will take you to the initial page of the setup process, where you can choose to promote either your specific book or yourself as a writer. Fill in those options and head to the next page.

You have a lot of different options here, and the main idea is to give your Fans as many ways as possible to connect with you. Do you have a book signing coming up? Post the details in the Events section. Is your new book trailer finished? Show it off in the videos. Finally got that blog going? Pull in your posts with an RSS feed. Think of your page as a hub for keeping your fans up to date on all the recent developments in your writing career.

Once you’ve got those set up, start some conversations. The discussion board is a great place to talk with your fans and solicit feedback on everything from ideas for your next book to reviews of your current one. Let them join in, too! This isn’t just about you after all. Create a community around your work and you’ll be surprised at what can happen.

Take Lulu author Brian Daniel Baker. Brian has published two books of poetry with Lulu, and he uses Facebook to promote them. His Fan page includes recent poems he’s penned, artwork from his second book, and a discussion board where he encourages fans to post their own poetry. In Brian’s own words, “my page has taken online networking to the next level, enabling me to freely share just this one side of me with the public, in a way that’s easy to manage and update. I can even track page traffic with auto-drawn graphs!”

Does that sound like something you might be interested in? Start your own Facebook Fan page here. Once it’s complete, share it with us in the comments below!

Nice page Melissa! When you log in and go to your Facebook home page, you should see “Page Manager” in your applications box, the one in the top right. Clicking that will let you see and edit your page.

Nice page and nice post William. I especially like your approach to running facebook ads based on targeting people who are interested in authors and books that are similar to yours. Facebook’s ad targeting is powerful, and it’s great to see you using it to raise awareness of your book among a targeted audience of potential fans. You’ll have to keep us posted with your results!

I’m wondering how you feel about Facebook pages vs. groups. I have a slight problem asking my readers to become ‘fans’ (it puts ME off a bit), and also with groups there are links to related groups – which can be a useful tool for promotion. Any thoughts?

First, groups cannot be indexed by search engines while Fan pages can. This means that if you have a Fan page, it will rank fairly high in Google for a search on your name. That extra search visibility is a big plus.

Second, Fan pages provide you with visitor statistics while groups do not. This extra layer of insight is a nice feature, and it can help you measure the effects of your promotional efforts.

Third, as William pointed out in his post on how to Advertise on Facebook Effectively, Facebook’s targeted ads can be tied to a Fan page, but not to a group. Should you ever choose to pursue that avenue, having a Fan page would definitely be advantageous.

I see your point about the related groups. That feature could be useful, but unfortunately the groups that appear there are just the groups that have the most membership among your group members. This results in groups that usually are only vaguely related, if at all. Take a look at the “related” groups for the Lulu.com Group to see what I mean. Only one of the 4 is really related to what we do.

I hope that helps you make your decisions, and like I said, the main thing is to get yourself out there, whether you do it through a Fan page or a Group. Let us know how it turns out!

Great advice! I know that Facebook will not allow you to pro-actively try and attract more fans without using their Advertisements. Is there a way to post my fan page to all my friends without upsetting facebook? Once I have notified all my friends I will start to advertise!

Hi Kevin,
I created two business pages on Facebook but couldn’t get any fans. The pages are pretty informative and look good so Im fresh out of any more ideas of why ppl dont join us.. can you take a look and see what you think?

Interestingly, I also created a group for my personal use and I got 80 “fans” in two weeks.. perhaps ppl just dont like to have corporate information on their stream ?
Thanks
Hadara

Hi! I have a fan page with fans, but when I pdate my status I don’t see it when I click on any of their pages. Shouldn’t it show? Am I missing a setting or something? I am thinking that the whole point of status updates is to promote myself.

I agree, but I would also add that your fan page should contain more than just content about your books. Yes you should talk about them. You want people to have discussions about your books. But if you are looking to grow your fan page you need to show more than just your business face.

Mix up the content and appeal to a larger audience. You may find that by doing so you’ll end up with 10,000 fans instead of 1,000.

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